A worker in Rome discovered in September bones inside clay pots at the Church of Santa Maria in Cappella, which allegedly belong to St. Peter, one of Jesus Christ's apostles, considered by Roman Catholics to be the first pope.

The Vatican said at the time that it will wait for a DNA comparison between the newly discovered relics and other bones of St. Peter that it keeps before commenting on their authenticity.

The workman said that the pots containing the bones were found buried beneath a large marble slab near the medieval altar of the church, which has been closed for 35 years.

The relics may have been kept at the Santa Maria church for centuries following an internal power conflict in the Catholic Church going back to Pope Urban II's reign in the 11th century.

The Bible says that Peter denied Christ three times, before repenting, and later being crucified upside down in Rome in the first century as a Christian martyr.